Restaurant Failure Rates

When starting out any new small-business venture, one is required to focus on the positives, address the negatives in a cool and level-headed manner, and forge ahead. However, we bar and restaurant entrepreneurs have a daunting statistic breathing down our neck, and every person we talk to addresses it: "Don't 90% of restaurants fail in their first year?" Until recently, I believed a variation of that number, though not quite as high, and simply continued on, knowing our product to be superior. Now I can happily report something else:

It's not true.

A bit of business reading lead me to a 5-year old article by BloombergBusinessweek tearing down that statistic. The simple facts are this, according to Ohio State's Hospitality Management Program's research, 25% of restaurants fail within a year. And 60% within three years. Which may seem high, until you realize that a 60% failure rate over three years is average, across all industries, for small businesses.

Let me write it again, for myself: bars and restaurants fail on a rate similar to any other small business. It feels good to know, and while there are thousands of moving parts involved in opening a bar (or any small business), this one positive thought can make things feel a little less daunting from time to time.

Pleasant Surprises.

We're always on the lookout for pleasant surprises that inspire us and finding this poster in the basement bathroom at one of Portland's more well-known restaurants was quite a treat.

Bonal is a quinquina, a bitter-laced and fortified wine made to be consumed before a meal to open the appetite. While it's not currently available in Maine (we're working our contacts to change that), we happen to snag a bottle for our home collection and have used it for years in other markets. It's fairly light, as far as aperitifs go, near a light-bodied sherry, and the bitterness is driven by quinine, but lends itself wonderfully to providing a punch up to a flagging spirit-driven cocktail.